The Splat Cooking Blog

I’ve had a real blonde moment, thought I’d share it with you as you may as well have a laugh. I’ve been playing with ingredients to put together a low fat, low carb Thai feature for The Times and on Sunday I tried out this steamed monkfish dish which really didn’t work. So, I think, maybe it’s because I used fresh chilies instead of dried…..start playing with ingredients for pastes and get fresh birds eye chillies out of the fridge and some lovely huge red chillies from Kenya too. Thinking that the Kenyan ones are probably a lot milder than the bird’s eye ones I start prepping them – with gloves (NEVER cut up chillies without gloves, you have no idea how painful it is trying to get contact lenses out with chilli on your hands – actually it’s worse when you go to put them back in next day and a tiny amount of chilli has spent the night soaking into the lens fluid, big ouch).

Thinking that maybe these big chillies are a bit too mild (you know what’s coming?) I try a piece – they’re not mild, in any way shape or form, even with the pith removed, this is the kind of stuff boys nights out at Tex Mex cafes are made of and after a number of beers the edge is probably taken off – suffice it to say I’m really glad I didn’t try the bird’s eye ones. My eldest just shook her head knowingly as if she realises who the teenager is in the house and she is sooooooo wise as she would never do anything as stupid as that – probably true.

Changed my trainers and put nice clean ones on, can’t see my others for mud – seriously! So now my nice clean ones are nicely broken in. Had lovely run up the hill, across the meadow, beat Jasper up the hillock again – he’s losing it. Well, OK, he was distracted by the Red Kites flying around. Great morning warm up, I love running with my dog, he’s brill. Quite good on food yesterday, had team meeting last night so didn’t have opportunity to snack and finished off the green chicken curry much to eldest daughter’s disgust.

OK, I am so excited – Jamie and I ran all the way to the top of Kop Hill this morning, no stopping, no walking, no talking – straight to the top – YES. I am so chuffed, this has been my aim for the past couple of years, I can’t quite believe I actually did it. Jamie admitted that he would have stopped at the lay-by half way up if I hadn’t been there so we’re both very pleased with ourselves. We then went through the woods – lovely mud – and all the way back down the other side to the pub, then up Jacob’s ladder – basically steps all the way back up the other side of the hill, across the meadow – with a stop for a ‘The hills are alive with the sound of music’ moment and a couple of twirls, up to Pulpit Hill and all the way down over Cymbeline’s Mount home. 10 miles in total and an hour and 56 mins. Feeling a little tired but exhilarated – totally justify eating a roast dinner now.

Jasper and I went out this morning aiming to attack the Phoenix Trail, but the path through to it was still totally flooded, Jasper refused at the first sight of this and I wussed out on the basis I don’t mind running the last mile in soaking trainers but it’s no fun running the whole lot with very wet feet. So we hit the Time Machine field – so called because there is a huge fallen log halfway through which has these fantastic knobbly bits on and it looks like the controls of time machine, so the children all play time travelling games around it. We haven’t been able to go through it for the past couple of months as it’s had sheep in it and Jasper doesn’t get that they don’t want to play with him, we call them ‘Jasper’s white fluffy toys!’ So we did some sprinting around the field, and I got very wet and muddy as it was still a bit waterlogged – great. My trainers weren’t feeling quite right as I’d washed them after the woods last Sunday and they were a bit too clean for my liking.

Also, lost 3 pounds, only 3 pounds to go to get to my ‘maximum’ happy weight and a total of 7 pounds to go to get to bikini weight – YES! Resisted the children’s fish and chips and made a lovely, healthy green chicken curry, reduced the amount of coconut milk and used my own home-made green curry paste – fantastic.

These are my favourite, with chocolate labrador, up to Pulpit Hill from the bottom, almost a mile of climbing – great warm up. The ground is drying out but we managed to find some mud – YES! I washed my trainers on Sunday evening and they didn’t look right – they do now! Up and down the field a couple of times stopping to stroke loads of dogs, it was sunny this morning and i think we saw 2 rotweilers, 2 spaniels, around 6 black labradors, 3 long haired black retrievers and Gilbert and his Dad – can’t remember what they are but Gilbert is 13 weeks old and his Dad, George I think is huge, then met Lottie a 4 month old black long haired retriever, soooo cute, my running gear was completely covered in muddy paw prints, lovely.

Oh, back to running, hills great, not losing weight but did make proper cheesecakes yesterday albeit with low fat cottage cheese but had to eat 2 of them just to make sure the recipe was OK, didn’t have any alcohol or biscuits but did have two lindt balls last night, aaaaaaaaaah!

4 miles up the Phoenix Trail tomorrow – boring!